News

KC Metro's changing its guidelines
I’m a member of a task force convened to evaluate and update the social equity and geographic value components of Metro’s service guidelines. There are precious few "regular" bus riders on this task force, and I think we need some in the audience. If you happen to have three hours free in the middle of a weekday, here’s the schedule of meetings. (The next one's on May 21st.)

Seattle's transportation future
This spring, SDOT is sponsoring a speaker series to explore what we Seattle can learn from other cities' transportation successes. The speaker list includes Gil Penalosa and Janette Sadik-Khan. (!)

My current* bus read is Helena Andrews’ new memoir, Bitch is the New Black. While the book isn’t exactly my flavor (no disrespect), there’s no doubt about Ms. Andrews’ talent; the woman is hilarious. She’s also a total bus chick–well, minus the buses, anyway. Peep it.

From chapter 10, “Walk Like a Woman”

In the face of my driver’s license deficiency and an abhorrence for the close body contact [ahem] prevalent on most Metro systems, I’ve learned …

It’s been a minute since I’ve posted, and that’s too bad, ’cause there’s a lot of stuff I’ve been meaning to tell you about. For one thing, I’ve been hitting my stride busing with two babies (more on that later) and having many fun adventures with my little BCiTs. I’ve been expanding my Orca repertoire (more on that later as well) and meeting all kinds of interesting fellow riders. I’ve also …

As I’ve mentioned several (perhaps too many) times, one of things I love about our home is its proximity to many of our regular destinations. Who needs a car (or, for that matter, a gym membership) when so much of your life is within walking distance? If you remove commuting from the equation, we Chick-Nerds walk at least as much as we bus–probably more.

Last Friday, Bus Nerd, Chicklet, and I headed to Portland (on the train!) to participate in the Towards Carfree Cities conference. (Actually, I was going to participate in the conference, and Nerd and Chicklet were going to hang around Portland. Minor detail.) It turned out to be a bad day to attend the conference (most of the good events happened earlier in the week) but a good day to learn more about getting around Portland. (Disclaimer: I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve been to Portland–and on …

Last week I posted a link to walkscore.com, a website that calculates the walkability of a given address based on the number of stores and other amenities within–you guessed it!–walking distance. It’s a cool site (and probably accurate in most cases), but I’m hoping it will eventually evolve to something a bit more sophisticated. The thing is, walkability is about a lot more than how many stores are in your neighborhood. For …

Wiping the post-bike-to-the-bus-stop sweat from one’s brow with one’s bare hands and then repeatedly flinging said sweat toward the front of the bus, nearly missing several other passengers and the driver.

A good way to avoid committing this one: packing a towel or rag in one’s pannier/bus chick bag.